Is SDSU becoming a MWC recruiting power?

Aztecs lead Mountain West in football recruiting

Serrano (Phelan) High School linebacker Jay Henderson (shown here running drills at an Aztec football camp in June) was the first player to commit to the Aztecs this year. His April commitment was followed by 11 others over the next two months.
— Stef Loh

Serrano (Phelan) High School linebacker Jay Henderson (shown here running drills at an Aztec football camp in June) was the first player to commit to the Aztecs this year. His April commitment was followed by 11 others over the next two months.
/ Stef Loh

As Independence Day neared last year, the Aztecs had a grand total of two names on their list of committed recruits for the class of 2013.

But this year is proving to be quite a different story.

Serrano (Phelan) High School linebacker Jay Henderson was the first kid to commit to the Aztecs as part of the 2014 recruiting class.

Henderson’s verbal came at the beginning of April, and in the two months since, San Diego State has picked up another 11 commitments to give them an even dozen of potential Aztecs.

For a mid-major program that has often had to wait till late in the fall to pick up momentum on the recruiting trail, these 12 commitments are the most the Aztecs have ever had midway through the summer.

So what accounts for this new wave of interest in the program Rocky Long and Co. are building on Montezuma Mesa?

“I think it’s two things,” Long said. “Number one, it’s the climate in recruiting. Everything has been speeded up. … You’ll have schools that, by the end of the summer, they’re all committed up. They’ll have every scholarship accounted for.

Sure.

That’s been the case for the Notre Dames, and Alabamas of the college football world.

But it’s somewhat unusual for Mountain West schools to have shored up half their recruiting class by the middle of the summer.

According to the tally kept by Rivals.com, as of Sunday, SDSU led the conference with its 12 commits, while Boise State had 10. Every other school is still in the single digits.

“It might not be happening to all schools in the Mountain West, but it’s happening to all schools in some form,” Long said.

There’s merit to that theory.

In the last decade or so, competition on the recruiting trail has gotten so cut-throat that schools are extending scholarship offers earlier than ever before.

For instance, last summer, even before San Diego native Tate Martell started his eighth grade year, he committed to play at Washington as part of the recruiting class of 2017.

The Aztecs aren’t quite at the point where they’re extending scholarship offers to middle schoolers, but Long said they’ve offered scholarships to a couple of players going into their sophomore seasons this fall.

“The reason we do that is that we see the guy as being a really highly recruited athlete later in his career, so you want to be the first one in to try to develop a loyalty and relationship with him, so you still have a chance at the end,” Long said.

Still, the Aztecs’ recruiting success this year isn’t just the product of the accelerated recruiting cycle.

“We’ve been successful over the last couple of years,” Long said.

And he isn’t just talking about the football program’s three-straight bowl game appearances and the Mountain West championship the Aztecs brought home in 2012.

“Our athletic department has been successful. I think that helps dramatically,” Long said. “For one school in any league to have 12 championship teams, that’s pretty amazing.”